Phase III Week #4: We’re done!
Four weeks are already over. Over the last weeks we integrated new functions into our Proof of Concept. Welcome to our final blogpost for OST Alpha Phase III.
A good answer is valuable
We had the idea for a service like kwanda for quite some time. We know there are many Q&A platforms in the World Wide Web but most of them have the problem of unqualified answers or just trashy replies. For example when you have an important question or want to find an expert to a topic you won’t get the answers you are hoping for, because users don’t have a real reason to post an answer. They may collect “useless points” on the platform but nothing more. So we first thought about building such a platform with money where users can ask questions and reward good answers with some cents. But there are problems. It is very difficult to make such microtransactions. In our opinion every question should be worth only some cents. If you have a certain amount of such transactions you have to deal with high fees and other problems. So we didn’t follow this idea any further.
Then, at the beginning of 2018, we heard about OST (at that time called “Simple Token”) because they were announcing a partnership with Unsplash. We are big fans of Unsplash (and even contributed some photos to the platform) and we were thrilled about OST when we first learned about this. So we followed the project and then and heard about Alpha Phase II. We had many ideas for PoCs but we selected our “Q&A” idea for participation, because we thought this to be a great use case for an own token.
Using a token has many benefits. We can transfer value without a need of payment processors. It also looks better for an user to get 5 tokens instead of 0,20 US-Dollar. And we can name our own token and build our brand more easily. With OST it is super simple to create a token. All you need are some OST tokens. You mint them into your own token (for example KWA, our “kwanda token”) and then they have value, because OST is traded on major exchanges like Binance or Upbit. We wrote more about the minting in our first blogpost.
As this is just a Proof of Concept we just minted some Alpha-Tokens with no value but it is a great possibility to try out those tools without being attached to “real” money. Minting our own token was possible in minutes and then it was viewable on OST View, the block explorer for OST.
As you may know we already had a functional demo for OST Alpha Phase II with kwanda. So for Phase III we tried to improve kwanda and implement new features with the Wallet- and Ledger-API.
Using kwanda
Now we want to show you how kwanda works. First of all you have to create an account. Now the user gets registered in our system and also connected to the OST API. We then get from OST a wallet address where the users tokens are stored. But, of course, at the beginning the user has 0 KWA (our token). Right now we have implemented an Airdrop function where an user can get 25 KWA for free. As this is just a Proof of Concept we let users access those tokens free of charge (they have no value as this are just demo tokens). If kwanda would ever be reality we could sell tokens to users so they can pay 5$ to get the amount of tokens worth their money to ask some questions.
So when the user has some tokens he can post a question. He can select the amount of how many tokens he would like to spend to the best answer. After he gets some answers the user can decide which answer is the best one.
Of course we have a notification panel so you know when a user posts an answer, get tips for your answers and so on. But those tips are one of our new features. More on this in the next section.
The new stuff
We had three main goals for Alpha Phase III:
- Integrate the new APIs for Ledger and Wallet and redesign the whole wallet page.
- Introduce custom tips so that every user can specify how many tokens he would like to tip to another user.
- Optimize existing functions and the frontend design of kwanda.
So first we integrated the new APIs. We already had a wallet page in Phase II. Here we saved every transaction in our own database and displayed transactions and token balance for the user. But our own database was not always completely in sync with the blockchain, especially, because we used different testing environments. Now we can use the official API for this. So we not just have the right data to display, we also have to write much less code. If the functions would have been ready in Phase II we could have saved quite some time. Now our wallet page is fully powered by the API and all data is completely in sync with the blockchain. You can find more information about our new wallet and our transaction types in our second blogpost.
On kwanda you can reward the best answer with a specific reward. But every other user can also tip an answer. This will help the answer rank higher on the questions page and is another reason for users to post high quality answers. In Phase II it was only possible to tip 1 KWA to an user. Now we implemented that you can select how many tokens you want to give. Below you can see this new function in action and we would also like to link to our third blogpost where we announced this new feature.
On the other side we have many small changes in the frontend. Of course we fixed some bugs as well. We won’t give here a detailed changelog of all those fixes. As you can see we implemented the new APIs as required for Phase III and even introduced a new feature. Check out the following video where Marc shows you how kwanda looks like in a live demo.
Temporary demo phase shortly!
You would like to try kwanda on your own? We will shortly host a temporary demo phase on www.kwanda.me. If you tried kwanda in Phase II, as stated, we deleted all collected data as this was just a demo phase as well. So you would need to create a new account, but then you can try to get some tokens, post questions and tip answers.
The demo phase should last some weeks and we will delete all collected data after the public demo as well. Stay tuned for more information when we host this public demo shortly. We will announce it on Twitter so you should follow us!
The OST team can access a development version of kwanda at any time so they can assure that we are using the APIs and trigger transactions directly from the OST API.
Links
tl;dr
What problem does your project solve for and what was the user need for creating your token economy?
Common Q&A platforms often have trashy or unhelpful answers for users, because members don’t have a real reason to post good content. With kwanda users can reward others with tokens worth only some cents. So they will get better answers and members can earn some money. The token economy is helpful, because so we can make micropayments without high fees and have our own branded token for marketing purposes. It even looks better for users to earn 5 KWA then 0,20 US-Dollar for example.
What was your key goal behind doing the challenge?
We are not a “real company”. We are only two freelancers and we built kwanda in our off time. In this short time we wanted to try by ourselfs how easy it is to integrate a token economy with OST into an app.
How did you plan the design for your wallet features?
We already had wallet features in our app after Phase II. We tracked every transaction on our own and displayed it on the wallet. This caused problems, because sometimes our records were incomplete or we had the wrong balance. Now we get all data from the API. Not only this is always the right data, it also costs us much less code to write. So we could have saved much time if the wallet and ledger features would have been available in Phase II.
What APIs did you use: Ledger, Balance, Actions, Token Details, etc.?
Especially for this phase we tried the new Wallet and Ledger features. On the one hand we integrated those API functions in our wallet page and redesigned it. On the other hand we are using transaction functions to trigger transactions and get data. We also register users with the API and receive user data from there. More informations are in our second blogpost.
What information did you show to the end user and why?
We give the end user a complete log of their token transactions from the API. They can get through the pages to their first transaction if they want to. We show the token amount transferred, the TX-ID, block number and TX-Fee right now.
How did you use design (UX/UI) for how to display this information?
We used a classic design for the transaction history. In a colorful field you can see how many tokens you have left and on the left side you have your ledger.
What did you like about using these APIs?
Using REST APIS isn’t our daily business, but with the documentation and the new released SDKs it wasn’t a problem for us to integrate the API. It is really easy to launch an own token with OST Kit and then include the API into an app or website. It shouldn’t be a hassle for any (web)developer.
What did you learn about designing these wallet features?
It’s super easy to integrate the transaction history. Just an API request and then we can display the data.
Kwanda is a Proof of Concept built for OST Kit Alpha Phase. It demonstrates how easy it is to integrate a token economy into a (existing) website or app powered by OST. If you want to learn more visit our website or follow us on Twitter.
You can find more information about OST Kit Alpha Phase III in the following blogpost. Please have a look at all the other great projects. You can find a collection of all blogposts here.
